WasteOfTheDay: $19M to Encourage Americans to Write Letters

In 1977, U.S. Sen. William Proxmire gave a Golden Fleece Award to the U.S. Postal Service for spending $3.4 million — $15 million in 2021 dollars – on an ad campaign between 1975-1976 to encourage Americans to write more letters to one another.

But it gets worse. Then, the Postal Service spent another $775,000 to study whether the campaign worked, costing taxpayers more than $4 million in inflation adjusted 2021 dollars.